A Tidy Workshop

Today, I spent about one-third of my time on a solo walk in Somerset, to the east of the Mendip Hills. I’ll write more about that later on this week and I’ll also have to update you on at least two of three projects I managed to complete in the workshop yesterday! They’re only small but the satisfaction in being able to complete so many pieces at once is great!

This evening’s post is merely a brief one to let you know about a little bit of organisation I created in the workshop recently. It all started with this tangle of plugs that have always lashed on to the fence of my pillar drill…

Four cables fighting for a space within two available sockets (although, neither my white extension lead of chip extractor plugs are featured here – they’re the ‘main stays’ for this particular socket). Each time I remove one and hook it over the pillar drill’s fence, the invitation arrives for the plug to slip loose and end up on the floor. Wires become tangled as I constantly switch from one to the next ans even then, identifying one black plug from the next is a challenge in itself!

So, I recently made this handy plug and cable tidy that’s now screwed to the wall. It seems I don’t have more of the progress photos I thought I had taken but it’s essentially a strip of 18mm ply fixed on top some 2x2in softwood. Each of those slots was bandsawn out to 11mm wide, which allows just enough room for the average 13amp cable to slip through. Holes at the back are 16mm in diameter – enough for “the tapered part” beneath each plug-head but still, they cannot slip out through the narrow slots and so, each plug is held securely in place until required.

It’s made such a difference to the ease of switching between machines now. I no longer have to rescue anything trapped behind another machine and, with the addition of the self-adhesive cable labels (I was certain I had a clearer photo of these), I have less trouble identifying specific plugs.

Another recent piece of organisation involved giving my workshop radio a dedicated space to live, from where it’s been occupying its space on the end of my bench for at least two-years now. A couple of spare shelving brackets came to the rescue and I salvaged an old scrap of MDF from the bin to make another (less refined) plug-tidy for the handful of leads I store in this area.

Thank you for reading. I hope this has given you some ideas for your own workshop. Now, I need to look closely at the sea of cables that surrounds my laptop…

Ah, I do like that! Thanks for sharing. Actually, my main problem with the idea of a ‘desk tidy’ like that is that I can’t visualise how I would fix it in place without using some kind of clamp or, dare I say it, screws! It either seems to be that or, I’d have to increase the bulk and weight of the item.